|
In a quick response to the death from anorexia of Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston, 21, 88 lbs in a 5'7" frame, the main fashion model agencies in Brazil announced that from now on they will require medical examinations, every six months, from all their models.
Reston, who died in São Paulo, on Tuesday, November 13, had been taken to a hospital on October 25, due to a kidney malfunction, but the doctors couldn't save her after years of starving herself to death. The new measures were announced in São Paulo, during a press conference in the south side of town, this Friday, November 17. The meeting with the press was called by, among others, representatives from model agencies Ford, One, Megal Model, Merlin and L'Equipe, which employed Ana Carolina. Denise Céspedes, the director of Ford Model in Brazil announced: "We are going to ask complete hemograms from all the girls. We want to show that those adolescents who search for perfection and go on crazy diets dreaming of becoming a fashion model are not going to make it." The agencies haven't established a date for when the new requirement will start to be enforced. They agree, however, that the new prerequisite will be a powerful weapon to fight anorexia and bulimia as well as other health problem among the would-be, beginning and seasoned models. Simone Lascani, director of Elite, told reporters that modeling agencies haven't required a medical examination from their candidates until now, as it happens in other professions, because the models are not hired literally by the agencies. "Models sign a limited-time working contract with the companies". "Fashion models agencies have a very important social role. I am intent on ending this madness of girls who subject themselves to crazy diets," said Mega Model Agency's director, Elie Hadid. Beauty that comes from a healthy body is more important than thinness, says Hadid: "A model can't be squalid." He also said that he favors a law that would require a periodic medical examination for all models in Brazil. Brazilians, this Friday, November 17, once again buried a young lady who had starved herself to death. For five years she had undergone treatment for anorexia. Carla Sobrado Casalle, the 21-year-old girl, was 1.70 meters (5.7) and weighed 45 kg (99 lbs). She was buried in Araraquara, a city 170 miles from São Paulo, where she was born. She spent three days in the hospital before dying. Casalle had been living, however, for three years, with an aunt in São Paulo, while studying fashion in a private college.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.